


Time Out

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John takes a few minutes to relax and reflect while he's staying at Jim's</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to Time &amp; Space, in which Pastor Murphy found John Winchester several months after Mary's death and offered to hook him up with the training and information he needed to be a hunter. For [](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/profile)[**pheebs1**](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/).

John lay on the bed, flat on his back with his knees bent, and pressed the cold bottle of beer to his forehead. Jesus, he was exhausted. The last weeks felt like boot camp and his junior year of high school all rolled up together. The first couple of days staying with Jim Murphy in Blue Earth had lulled John into forgetting Jim's promise of training, of teaching. The sprawling old house next to Jim's church felt safe, its thick walls keeping out the elements better than any cheap motel room. John slept deeper than he had in close to a year, ate food that never saw the inside of a package, watched his boys play, talked to Jim, who was beginning to feel like a friend.

Then the vacation ended. Jim's friend Bobby showed up, with a lockbox in the back of his truck chock full of weapons. Some of them John knew well--the grip of a rifle in his hands, the balanced weight of a machete--but even those skills were dulled by years spent wielding nothing more deadly than a wrench. Grease on his skin instead of blood. Bobby remedied that with long hours spent sparring, training on the weapons, and John felt those hours in his aching muscles, his ass bruised from hitting the dirt too goddamn many times.

If John's aching body could be blamed on Bobby Singer, the tense pounding in John's head was all Jim Murphy's fault. Days training with Bobby, dinner with his boys, then John spent the evenings with Jim, struggling to learn Latin, at least enough to make sense of the texts, and studying the many forms of evil that peopled the darkness, like some kind of fucked up version of biology class. John hadn't tried to study, to learn like this since eleventh grade.

He'd gotten in the college prep classes that year and studied like hell, hoping to get into Tech. He'd stayed up working half the night sometimes, poring over his books by the dim kitchen light so he didn't keep his brother up, memorizing dates and equations and conjugated verbs until it all made sense. It all stopped making sense that summer night when Pop wrapped his old truck around a tree, and the police said he'd been drinking, but John knew he hadn't been that drunk, and it hadn't been raining either.

Mama said maybe there was a dog in the road, but John knew his father wouldn't swerve to miss no dog, and the insurance people knew the same thing. In the end, there'd be no college money for John, not any way in hell. Senior year, he spent his evenings working instead and slid by in school, doing just enough to graduate. Not like the Marines would care what kind of grades he pulled, so long as he could pull a trigger.

But the warm bed under John's back and the cold bottle on his head felt like heaven, and he let himself smile as he heard footsteps in the hall and Dean's little voice getting closer. The bedroom door wasn't latched, and John heard it swing open with a creak as Dean ran inside. "Daddy!"

John sat up and put his beer down on the table between the beds just in time, as Dean clambered up on the bed. "Hey, buddy, you have fun playing with Jeannie?"

"We played on swings!" Dean's eyes looked brighter than they had since Mary died, and John cursed himself for pulling his boys down with him all these months.

"Sammy, too?" John ran his hand through Dean's hair, too long now and sweaty from playing. Deans small head nodded under his hand.

Just then Jeannie came through the door with Sammy in her arms. The high school girl, a member of Jim's church, came by in the afternoons to play with the boys while John and Bobby worked. She never talked to John much, but the boys liked her, and Jim trusted her. When she got close to the bed, Sammy squirmed in her arms, reaching out for John. John took him off her hands, and Sammy nestled himself against John's chest, clinging like a limpet as usual.

"Thanks, Jeannie," John nodded up at the girl, who just blushed and looked down.

"I don't mind."

John didn't like feeling as though he owed her, but he didn't have much to pay her with, and Jim assured him it was okay. Girl just liked being there for some reason. "Well, we'll see you tomorrow."

She nodded and left, and John let his tired body drop back down to the mattress. Sammy gurgled as he bounced a little against John's chest, and Dean cuddled in next to them on the narrow bed. Half an hour until dinner. John closed his eyes and listened to his boys breathe.


End file.
